russodraw

Site Up

2012-02-09T22:44:00.000-08:00

Hmmmmrrrrr

2012-02-09T22:28:00.001-08:00

28 of 100

2012-02-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

The other day someone asked me how many drawings I did when I went busking, and I realized I had no idea.

So this past weekend I started numbering them. Friday, Saturday, and Monday I did 100 drawings. Here are the 28 I kept :)

a very excellent drawing of me busking

2012-02-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

by Chrisi "Zera" Heist

Yoga Bunny Cards

2012-02-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

I'm working on instructional cards to print, and sell as sets. My sister (a certified yoga instructor) is going to help me write the text. Here are the twelve we're starting with. More to come....

bunnyoga.com

So this cheese... is it perfect?

2012-02-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

I've done some updating on my website, which you can see here.

I've gotten some feedback. I'm feeling at a crossroads. It's hard to put into words beyond that at the moment. I'd like to talk about a dream I had about the book about a week ago.

(dream flashback dissolve) doo-le-la-doo! doo-le-la-doo!doo-le-la-doo!doo-le-la-doo!doo-le-la-doo!

I was taking the yoga certification course I took about two years ago.
.
Well, it was the same kind of program, only we weren't getting certified to teach yoga. We were getting certified to cast evil magic spells.

There was a spell I was trying to conduct that would wipe out 1/4 of New York's population. But I did the spell wrong. I turned a bus full of people into Zombies. They got out of the bus. I was sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of Thompson Square Park. They came up and devoured me. I laughed as it was happening because I knew this reality was like a video game, and I had several lives left.

But, there was something in the certification course more important than these mass murdering spells, something that I knew I wasn't understanding. I needed time alone to figure it out. The people running the course kept holding these mandatory seances where we would all hold hands and chant but it really didn't do it anything. It felt like a deliberate distraction. It felt like the people running the course wanted me to figure out the truth, but were deliberately keeping me from it at the same time.

I figured out that there was a demon I had to conjure, to help me figure out my next steps. His name was rhajem, or something like that. He had blue skin and a big nose with sharp teeth and a long tongue and blue finger nails. He was a real joker. Always putting his hand to his nose and waving him tongue around.

I knew I had to find some time alone in front of the mirror to conjure rhajem, but it was difficult to find any time alone. I was constantly surrounded by women. To the point where I wasn't even sure if I was a guy or a girl myself. But either way I wasn't too concerned. I just wanted time alone in front of the mirror to conjure this demon. I was in my sister's childhood bedroom. In the next room was a bathroom with a mirror I could use, but I just couldn't get to the mirror.

Then everything switched....

The whole reality became like an underground level in Super Mario Bros. But instead of Mario, I was the mouse from the story. I was trying to "beat the level" the same win that I was trying to figure out what was really important in the evil magic certification course. Also, I was wearing a magical hat that kept transforming from a dapper top hat to a tall, black, furry russian hat.

As soon as the realities had switched, my friend Daniel was taking the Nintendo controller and saying, "Here, I'll show you how to beat it." He was very helpful, and I did need help, but he was being rather condescending at the same time.

So, I, the mouse, was fighting my way through this underground video game dungeon, with Daniel at the controller. There were giant pieces of cheese and giant bottles of wine everywhere. I realized that this food all belonged to a giant (well, giant relative to a mouse) demon who's name I didn't know. He was present, but not in physical form. I was in a room with him, where I had to somehow bring this giant demon into physical form in order to defeat him and "beat the level."

Then I woke and realized that something about this video-game-dungeon-world. A few people who've read 'The Perfect Cheese' have asked me what makes the cheese so special. The answer, I now realized, was that the cheese came from a different reality than the mouse's. In the dream, the cheese had lured the mouse back into it's reality. Here, the mouse was surround by several giant pieces of this "perfect cheese" that he'd wanted for so long, but he was also trapped, and defeating this demon, who owned all this food, was the only way for him to escape.

My God Am I Lazy

2012-01-30T20:53:00.000-08:00

I got a job offer a few weeks ago. I was asked to draw a model from a photo, something that would take me a half hour, tops to do. Not paid... he was asking for a quick audition drawing.

I put it off for a full two weeks.

Tonight he texted me, I sat down and did it in five minutes. Why do I procrastinate on things like this?

On the plus side though, I really like the way this came out, and I think I would really enjoy a career in fashion illustration.

Notebook Page?

2012-01-25T23:51:00.001-08:00

I've been using a lot a my pages from busking to jot down notes/thoughts onto. It saves paper, plus I prefer it to blank pages.

It gave me the idea to try to make some small notebooks featuring faded versions of the quick Sharpie portraits I've been doing recently.

Here's a quick page/idea sample:

Hmmm? What says you, google calendar?

Google calendar: No! You're too busy.

Me: :(

Wait, What do you guys at home think I should do???

Cavity

2012-01-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

This is a quick sketch i did of a cute girl with a tooth ache.

Her tooth is making a mean smiley face and saying, 'Heh!'

Hot or Not?

2012-01-25T23:26:00.000-08:00

The other day I was in a draw-off!

I was busking, some guy came up and asked if he could draw me while I drew him. I said let's do it. We drew each other, and drew-in a bit of a crowd, which is always exciting.

There was a bum there watching, Ralphie. Maybe 'bum' is harsh, but whatever. I've seen Ralphie on the subway since I moved to New York fourteen years ago. If he has a problem with me calling him a bum, he can talk to me. Anyways, Ralphie looked at both our pictures, then started routing for the other guy. He said, 'this guy is a professional! You're just an amateur!' Ouch!.... I guess.

I can't really say if I actually lost the draw-off or not. I can't make an objective call, and no one made Ralphie the official ref. But, ya... maybe the other guy won.

Here's the picture he drew of me.

It's very cool. It feels a lot like me. Maybe more than my drawing felt like him. I win I could post mine for a side-by-side comparison, but we exchanged pictures after the draw off.

So a few days after the draw-off, I was busking again, and a guy getting on the subway yelled out at me, 'Yo, you ain't that talented.' People have told me, 'ya, that doesn't really look like me' after I've drawn them before, but this was the first time anyone has yelled a general 'you suck!'

But, then, I get so many compliments when i go out busking. People are really kind. And, if one or two people tell me I'm an amateur and have no talent. Well.... you know....

If I'm at a bar, and a woman tells me I'm pretty hot, that's a great compliment. But if a woman at bar comes up and says, "you're not even that hot" that's actually more of a compliment, if you think about it.

Anyways, obviously I'm pretty hot. Look at that face.

Bumping into an artist I admire... thoughts, reflections on event

2012-01-25T22:10:00.000-08:00

I bumped into Kate Beaton today at a coffee shop!

I've been going to the bookstore around the corner to keep reading selections from her book 'Hark! A Vagrant!' Her work is pretty addictive.

I introduced myself but felt....
a) a little forward. I can see how it's weird weird when people you don't know come up and start talking to you. When I'm drawing on the subway platform, people I don't know come up and talk to me constantly. But that's what I'm there for. I'm asking for it.
b) a little rude. I noticed her right as i was leaving with my friend. I'd already taken my sweet time going to the bathroom, and getting my stuff together. People who hang out with me don't need to be told how long i take getting ready to go. So, as I was talking her, I kept looking over at my friend by the door, who was growing inpatient. It can feel weird when some is talking to you but keeps looking away, which is what I was doing.

Still.... it was cool! check out her site, it's simple and features her art very nicely.

I love her Great Gatsbys comic. I've never read it. But this is still great.

Tiny People on the Subway

2012-01-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

The other week when I was cleaning up I found a roll of paper tape that wasn't sticky on either side. I know, pretty useless, right? So I decided to bring it onto the subway with me and draw a bunch of tiny faces on it.

Then I made a little subway set to pull the roll of people though, so it looks like the subway is standing still but the people inside are moving...? Hmm, that doesn't really... Anyways, isn't it interesting that that all the graffiti on the subway is written backwards? This is a special world where all the graffiti artists are all dyslectic, and is unrelated to me not checking the Photobooth settings before I hit record.

See Something Say Something

2012-01-17T01:50:00.000-08:00

Before you begin reading this; I end this rather long blog entry with a scenario in which I'm given a choice to stop either one of two terrible things that happened to me in college. Just so you know where this is headed.

So last week, on Thursday, I was busking at Union Square and there was this guy.... At first he seem to not like that I was drawing him. I thought I detected a scowl, so I quickly moved on and started drawing some one else. Then, a little later, I looked up and the same guy was looking down at me from the staircase, watching me. I smiled at him and he smiled back and I went on drawing. Then a little later he came up and kneeled down next to me.

I though he was going to ask to keep a drawing or ask me to draw him, but instead he said, "Listen, you seem like a really nice guy. Something's happening tonight and I don't think you should be here." I asked him what he was talking about and he said, "It's a security thing. I can't talk about it. Really. But I have some guys coming in and some bad stuff is going down. You shouldn't be here tonight."

"Well," I said, "I was going to leave around 8." He looked at me like I a was a kid negotiating to stay up past his bedtime said, "Make it 7:30." The truth is I'd be happy to leave early. My back was hurting and I just wasn't feeling good about any of my drawings that day. A potential terrorist attack was sounding like an early school snow closing.

Still, I wanted to know what this was all about. "Well," I said, "You've certainly got my interest." He laughed, motioned towards my drawings on the ground and said, "Well, you've got my interest with all this.... It seems like you've got something special going on. Just promise me you won't be here."

The man had dark brown skin, facial stubble, wore a ripped up hoodie, and his body was covered in tattoos. He also seemed to be telling me that, out of every person on the subway platform, I was special and worth saving from a terrorist attack. But how did this man know about a terrorist attack? Was he a terrorist? When he spoke to me he maintained eye contact, smiled a lot, was very personable and polite, and was telling me I was special. I liked him. And throughout history, weren't terrorist notoriously likable? Robin Hood: sort of a terrorist, very likable. Harry Tuttle from the movie 'Brazil': terrorist, likable. Che Guevara: I know nothing about him, but I think he was a terrorist and is 'liked' by many t-shirts.

I shook this guy's hand a told him I would be gone by 7:30. Then he took off.

So, then I sat there drawing, not thinking about much except how I would let myself go home a half hour earlier than planned. But then I started thinking, 'oh ya, terrorist attack on the subway.'

Sometimes I play this game where I imagine I'm back in high school or college, except I know everything I know now, so how do I live my life differently? And then I always get to something like 9/11 and think, what would I do about that? Even if I'd known about that, I couldn't have prevented it. All I could do would be to make sure friends and friends of friends stayed away from downtown Manhattan that day. But that's easier said than done. Even if you could get your friends to believe you on this, friends of friends would be a stretch. And then when 9-11 happens, what does everyone think? That you have super future powers? No. They think that you're Al Qaeda.

So, what if I've just been informed of... well, maybe not the next 9/11.... but maybe just a mini 9/11, on the subway. Like I said, there's no way to prevent it, I don't think. But maybe I could at least let my friends know about it so they can walk home instead. What time was this terrorist attack going to happen?

The guy said I should be gone by 7:30, so let's say it's going to happen, if it's going to happen, between 8 and 8:30. So, around 7 I start to think, "if I'm actually going to warn anybody about this I really need to do it soon... I'll just draw for a little bit longer." And then it's 7:15 and I think, "Okay, this is ridiculous, I really need to go warn people." So I pack up my stuff and take the subway two stops into Brooklyn.

Once above ground, I call my girlfriend. I ask her if she's home, and then tell her about this guy, and then ask her if she's home again. "Wait," she says, "are you trying to make sure I don't take the subway?" Ya, sort of, I tell her. And then I'm expecting some kind of, 'awww, you're so sweet' reaction, but instead, she tells me I should really call the cops. I really don't want to call the cops. But as soon as my girlfriend suggests that I call the cops, I know this is probably what I'll wind up doing. I tell her that I'm going to call my best friend and then call her back.

So, I call my best friend and tell him about this guy, and he just laughs and then I laugh too. "Wait," he says, "Are you serious?" I tell him I'm serious, then we both laugh again. "So, what do you think I should do?" I ask. "Well," he says, "I think you should call everyone you know and tell them not to take the subway." For a second I can't tell tell if he's being serious or not, and then I realize he's not, and then I realize how stupid this idea sounds.
"How many crazy people do you talk to on the subway?" he asks me.
"A lot," I tell him.
"So what makes you think this isn't some crazy guy?"
The only reason I have is that he didn't seem crazy. I tell him that my girlfriend thinks I should call the cops.
"Do you want to call the cops?" he asks.
I really don't want to call the cops.

One time my downstairs neighbor got robbed. I had seen the guy. He'd come to our door under the guise of a city inspector, then gone downstairs and robbed our neighbors. A few days later I went to the local police station to see if I could identify the guy via mugshot. So I sat in front of computer by myself for what seemed like hours, clicking through photo after photo of guys who looked nothing like the fake city inspector except that they were all black.

And this was how I picture the next six to twelve hours or my life going if I called the police. They'd ask me what the guy looked like. Skinny, facial stumble, tattoos, brown skin. What's that? Brown skin? Here's a photo of everyone with brown skin or a deep tan who's ever existed. Click through every single picture and let us know when you're done.

It sounded really annoying. I called my girlfriend back.

I asked her what she thought I should do, and she told me that she already told me what she thought I should do. But it was up to me, of course.

God dammit.

I hung up and dialed 9-1-1. (Earlier when talking to my best friend I asked him how I would even call the cops. He asked me if I was serious, then told me to call 9-1-1. What? Even for something like this? Of course. Who else would you call?) I told the woman on the other.end what had happened and she asked me if the guy was still with me. No, I told her, this had been on the subway. I was above ground now, by myself. She sighed heavily and told me there was another number I had to call for this kind of thing. 1-800-77-TIPS. But that wasn't even enough numbers to be a real number. I repeated it back to her. No, she said, 1-800-77-PIPS. Pips? or 'Pipps' with two 'p's. I heard the woman's eyes roll and then she hang up on me.

God dammit. I didn't know what to do. I tried calling my girlfriend back, but the call wouldn't go through. Uh-oh.... Did half-heartly reporting a terrorist attack make me a suspected terrorist? Was Homeland Security stopping me from contacting anyone? Should I call 77-PIPS even though that obviously made no sense as a phone number? I could walk home, go online, a research the right number to call.... but it already 7:45. There wasn't enough time, and I didn't know what to do.

Either something was going to happen on the subway between 8 and 8:30 (half hour is a reasonable window for terrorist attack, right?), or something wasn't going to happen. If something did happen, and I'd known about it, and people got hurt, and I was home checking facebook because I forgot I was suppose to be googling a terrrorist hotline, I would feel really bad. If something happened, and I was in the subway when it happened.... well, I didn't know what I'd do. But maybe I could help, somehow. At the very least, I'd know that something happened or didn't happen instead of sitting at home, wondering if something happened. It would definitely be better than being on facebook. So I got in the subway and went back to Union Square.

On the subway ride over, I remembered that I'd been up till 4am the previous night organizing my desk. If I died in a terrorist attack, it would be terrible... but on the other hand, what luck! The paper hell pit of unfinished projects that's followed me around my entire life would be totally forgotten. This clean desk would be who I was now. Forever.

When I got to Union Square, it was just a few minutes to eight. I walked around, clutching my artwork, watching the other performers, two drummers at opposite ends of the platform. One of the guys I knew. Not by name, but I'd seen him there almost everyday that week. Whenever he saw me made some remake about how I should give him all the money I made. He was kind of an asshole. But kind of likable. I watched him play for a while and realized that it would be terrible if this guy died. Then, I looked around at all the other people coming in at out of the subway cars, and I realized how terrible it would be if any of these people died. It seems this should go without saying. But earlier, when I'd left the same platform around 7:15, my thought process had been, 'screw all these people, I just need to warn my friends'. And now I was feeling ashamed of that.

And then a woman came up and offered me five dollars. I refused it at first, because I wasn't even drawing, but then she told me I'd drawn a picture of her daughter at some point before, and insisted I take it. So I did, and she walked away.

I walked over to the spot where I normally sit and draw people, and right before I got there I thought, wouldn't it be great if my terrorist friend was sitting there, drawing? If the whole thing had been an act to get me to leave so he could sit and draw people for donation instead of me. But he wasn't there. I looked all around, up onto the stairs, but he wasn't there. And then I thought, maybe I'm more scared of seeing this guy, of his reaction to me not listening to him, than I am of a terrorist attack. But really, if this guy saw me, and saw that I hadn't listened to him, what was he going to do? Stab me? Make the terrorist attack even terrorist'ier? It was 8:30. I was already on the subway platform. I was beginning to realize that I was crazy or this guy had been crazy, but either way there wasn't going to be any bomb. So I sat down, put out my drawings and my donation can, and started drawing people again.

I did this for about an hour, and then I went home.

So what had that guy's warning been about? Was he a terrorist? Was he a lazy terrorist? Was he a crazy non-terrorist?

Talking to one of my roommates that weekend, it seems, something was going on. She said there was a crazy amount of cops at the Times Square station on Friday night. On Saturday, I went busking at the Bedford L station and there was never less than three cops walking around; not crazy, but definitely more than usual. I guess someone thought something was going to happen on the subways this weekend. And, ok, maybe that guy who came up to me was a terrorist who was willing to blow the whole plan because he thought I was special and worth saving... but what actually makes sense is that he was with Homeland Security, or maybe just a cop, and was trying to clear the subway platforms as much as he could.

Am I brave for going back into the subway when I thought there may be a terrorist attack? Am I a racist for thinking some guy is a terrorist just because he's telling me about a terrorist attack and his skin is brown? I don't know.

But, going back to that game where I can go back in time, knowing everything I know now.... Two terrible things happened while I was in college. The first was a friend committed suicide, the second was 9-11. Way more people died in the second thing, and I'd like to think that this is the thing I'd stop from happening. But I'd stop the first.

Portfolio-o-o-o!!

2012-01-16T13:37:00.000-08:00

So, I've been debating weather or not to go to the Winter Conference for The Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators. It'd be great to meet some contacts in the industry, but mostly, I was interested in showcasing my portfolio and manuscript for agents and editors. So, I emailed someone from the conference to see if I submit my work but not go (ie pay) for the conference. She wrote back to tell me that not only can I not do this, but even if I payed to the conference I still couldn't submit my work, because the showcase for this was already full.

Welp, that settles that.

Still though, the conference would have been a good deadline to have a portfolio and physical manuscript for the book ready, so I'm going to do my best to have them both ready for that weekend. Then maybe I can creep around outside the conference and accost people with my work.

Below are 13 pieces I've selected for my portfolio:

1)"How to be Special"

2)"Purple Hoodie"

3)"Halloween at Union Square L Train Platform" Actually drawn on halloween! Check out my costume here.

4)"Is this April O'Neal?"

5)"Click Clack Boom" this is an actual band that I drew during their rehearsal. Here's their Facebook page.

6) "Yoga Bunny" you can see more of these here, or read about a strange dream I had about the bunnies here.

7)"Tree House" this is from a series of illustrations for 'Lost Dog', a feature script I wrote with my friend Sean Richardson. You can see our short film, the first scene from the script, here.

8)"Too Much Coffee" My friend and former roommate, Asako Fujimoto, has the original of this hanging in her apartment in Paris..... France!

9)"Printing Press"

10)"Keith and Erin" my other friend and former roommate, Keith McCleary, has a print of this at his parents place in Livonia.... New York!

11)"The Hall of Biodiversity" my favorite part of the Museum of Natural History.

12) "Untitled" You've got to have at last one untitled!

13) "The Bear and The Chickadee" this is from a Russian joke that my friend Daniel Olshansky told me. Russian humor is very different from our own. Find out why here!

As you can see, there is a wide array of styles and mediums that I use to create my work. Thanks for taking a look at my portfolio. If you are interested in custom pieces or know of anyone who is looking for an illustrator please pass this along. Thanks.

Snow White is Alright

2012-01-15T18:48:00.000-08:00

Last night I got home from busking in the subway at 1:30am, and everyone was asleep. So, naturally, I decided to watch a VHS copy of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'.

I haven't seen this movie since I was a kid and I was really taken by how beautiful the animation is.

But, it's a little strange how the much of the movie is about cleanliness. Snow White is always cleaning something, while the Evil Queen is always carelessly throwing or kicking something. The Dwarfs even have a whole song dedicated to washing up before supper.

Also, you'd think that if the Evil Queen wants Snow White to trust her about this apple, she might find a magic disguise slightly less creepy than the most creepy old hag on the planet.

She had a pretty thick book of spells. It seems there'd have to be something better in there.

With a better disguise, Snow White would have eaten the apple sooner, the Queen would have gotten away faster, and could have avoided getting pushed off the cliff by the dwarfs and the adorable woodland animals (which is sort of what happened).

But, it's easy to make fun of movies that were written in the 1930's. 'Snow White' is a great movie, and even though it's probably racist somehow, because it was made in the 1930's, it's a fine way to spend a Saturday evening, I think.

Some Pictures and Thoughts About Winter

2012-01-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

Website Update - Look at the Whole Book!

2012-01-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

So, you can now look at all the pages for 'The Perfect Cheese' online. You can get to the next two-page spread by clicking the one you're on.

http://bunnyoga.com/page1-2.html

I still need to clean up a lot of these pages in photoshop (the places that are off-white as oppose to all white look pretty sloppy), and make a border, obviously.

Also, I'd like to make it so you can click the right page to move forward, and the left page to go back. Unfortunately, in order to do that I'm going to have to go back and make all the page-spreads two jpegs instead of one, and then go back and rewrite all the code. Ugh... I don't really enjoy writing code.

My friend Josh had a suggestion to give an option so that you can see the pages bigger. It's a good idea, I'm just not sure how to do it right now. Maybe just make an alternate version of the site where you could scroll, instead of click, through all the pages in large format. But this also involves a lot more code writing :(

Anyways, thank you, friends and readers, for checking this out. Even though I'm complaining about code, your thoughts and suggestions are the code to my heart.... or something (gosh, that was terrible). Seriously, thanks for your thoughts and suggestions :)

Eight Drawings From This Week

2012-01-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

Extra points if you can find the peanut butter stain.

Building A Website for My Book

2012-01-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

For the past few months I've been avoiding artistic work on the computer as much as I could. I drew the 34 page of my children's book by hand, and it was such an enjoyable process. Nothing kills the temptation to check facebook every ten minutes like not having a computer in front you.

But now that I need to begin the process of shopping my book around, it's time to accept that I live in computer age. The most efficient way to get my story to agents will be to build a really nice website.

Since I designed the pages to work as spreads, so the left and right side of the book look good together, I want viewers on the site to able to see two pages at a time.

Here's a simple layout I put together with the first two pages.

Both pages are 600px lengthwise, together 1200px

I think this should be big enough for people to make out detail, but hopefully not bigger than most people's browser windows.

So, dear friends and readers, if could check out the above pages and let me know how the size works for you, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

This Guy Wants You to Chill-Ax

2012-01-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

This a guy I drew on the subway the other day who was walking up to everyone and telling them to chill-ax. Do you think he had the right idea? Obviously, the world would be a better place if everyone was chill-ax'ing. But I don't know if chill-ax'ing is something you can get people to do just by walking up and telling them to do it.

How would you feel if this guy came up to you and told you to chill-ax? Would you feel more chill-ax'ed or less chill-ax'ed?

Six Cool Children's Books

2012-01-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

So, beginning the process of trying to get my children's book published...

My friend You Jung Byun, a published children's book illustrator, suggested that a good place to start would be to make a list of 20 or more children's books which I like, or which I feel have similarities to my own book, and then trying to contact the editor of these books.

So, the other day I went to Books of Wonder, a great children's book store on 18th street, close to Union Square. I got there only a hour before they closed, but I had time to pick out ten books, and out of that made a list of six books which I really enjoyed. Initially, I was looking for books that had a rough, hand-drawn feel to the illustrations, as opposed to something that felt like it was all done inside Abode Illustrator. Then, reading through, I picked out books with a sense of humor that would appeal to both kids and adult. So, here are the six I picked out:

"Shadows" by Suzy Lee.... not so much for sense of humor but for a simple, sophisticated style that a tells a story using almost no words at all....a very cool blog post about this and two other book by her here.

"Itsy Mitsy Runs Away"by Ellanna Allen.... The story's a little cheesy, but the insanely cute illustrations and vibrant colors make this a really enjoyable read. Also, like my story, the author often uses both traditional text and dialogue bubbles to tell the story, and the dialogue bubbles are often incorporated into the over page design.... you can see what I mean on the author's website, which has some cool animation sample pages you can look at.

"Louise the Big Cheese" by Elise Primavera and illustrated Diane Goode... this is a series of books. The one I read was about the hero, Louise, wanting a fancy new pair of shoes. It's a good story, about a little girl who wants to be more grown up than she is... but what really stuck out to me were the illustrations, which have all the energy and zaniness of a 1930's comic strip, complete with a little talking dog... You can see the illustrator's website here.

"A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever" by Marla Frazee... A very funny story about two boys staying with one of their grandparents for week, while they attend nature camp during the day. But really, the book is about how the boys stay up all night playing video games, eating waffles, and building little scenes out of seashells and rocks. It's a really nice balance between funny and sweet. Here's the authors website, and here's a cute/creepy youtube review by two little chin people.

"The Heart and the Bottle" by Oliver Jeffers... this book also isn't particularly funny, but it stood out to me because, like in my own story, it's about a character who intentionally keeps herself from something she loves, but then has to figure out how to get it back. The pictures are beautiful and use a very cool collage-within-dialogue-bubble technique to convey ideas much bigger than text in a children's book would normally allow... There's a page on the author's site about the book here, featuring a trailer for the book's ipad version, which looks very innovative and interactive, even if it is read by Helen Bonham Carter (she sounds so snooty all the time!)

"Children Make Terrible Pets" by Peter Brown.... This book has become very popular. I've seen it featured in a lot of bookstores and best seller lists. Finally having a chance to read it, I see why. The story is simple and cute, and the characters design is really funny. The main character, a bulky girl bear in a little pink too-too, is very expressive, conveying all the right emotions as her new pet destroys her home and breaks her heart. The author has a very cool website as well (scroll over the tiny little sheep and see what happens!)

Welp, that's it for now... If you're reading this and you have any books you'd recommend I check out, please let me know :)

And if you have any tips about getting in touch with the editors of these books, please let me know as well. Thanks!

Dream of Yoga Bunnies

2011-12-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a vivid dream involving the yoga bunnies.

If you're reading this blog and you don't know about the yoga bunnies.... two years ago I took a yoga certification course at Yoga to the People, which consisted of memorizing and being a to teach a specific sequence of Asanas, or poses. To help myself with the memorization, I drew out all the poses being done by cute little bunnies, then pasted these drawings onto flash cards with key technical points from each pose written on the back. There were, I recall, 60+ people in my class and this became the thing that everyone knew me for: the guy who drew the yoga bunnies. I got all kinds of suggestions for things I should make and sell with them, from t-shirts, to posters, to yoga mats. When the owner of YttP announced that he would be printing special t-shirts for the entire class, everyone wanted the use the bunnies, and I agreed, but several classmates warned me to be careful of copyright and ownership and things like that. So I submitted a few of the drawings to the U.S. Patton office and got a copyright, but it was never really an issue, because the t-shirts never got printed anyways.

One year later, I finally put up site with a bunch of the yoga bunny illustrations, bunnyoga.com, and stated on the site that I was working on children's book with the bunnies. For the next few months, I tried coming up with an idea for the book. I came up with on story about a little girl teaching yoga to her pet bunny, but no one I told seemed to love the idea, and eventually I had to admit that I didn't either. I got several suggestions to just do a simple instructional book, and I tried playing around with, but I felt weird about it for two reasons... 1) there's already plenty of children's books with cute animals demonstrating yoga poses on the market already. 2) The sequence we were taught at YttP was, explicitly stated, copyrighted, and I was scared to get into any kind of legal battle with something that had started out so positive and therapeutic for me. Then I came up with an idea for a book called "Yoga isn't Everything" which would show the bunnies doing yoga but then show them doing something else like eating ice cream, making out, or hula hooping. It was fun to draw this idea for a few pages, but then I stopped because I realize the message of this book was too muddled.... "Yoga is a fun thing to do but if you don't do it's okay because there are other fun things to do".... Who really needs a book telling them that?

As all this was happening I was also getting emails from people I'd never met who had found my site via stumbleupon. They told me that they loved the idea and were excited to see the book. This was encouraging for me, but also frustrating. I had a large group of people who wanted to buy some kind of product featuring my artwork. It seemed that coming up with a way to make money off this should be pretty simple, but for reason I couldn't find a place to even start.

By the time May rolled around my brain was burnt out on the bunnies. I took any mention of a children's book off the bunnyoga site and stared to focus on a different idea ("The Perfect Cheese" which I just finished writing and illustrating). But the bunnies have always loomed around in my head, and they've started to embody a feeling of incompletion, and sometimes even failure.

So, having this vivid dream about the bunnies last night felt therapeutic. As I wrote the events of the dream down this morning, I realized that it speaks to a lot of issues that have maybe held me back from doing anything with these characters. I'm writing the whole dream here as far as I can remember it, mostly for myself so I can come back to it later....

I'm on my way to the dentist and I want to make some kind of art project out of it, so I keep drawing all these monsters with tooth aches. Then I decide I really want to do something with these drawings, so I take them on tour....

I'm in the back of a passenger van, driving around the spaces between New York City and New Jersey, and the sky is always the deep blue that is just before the sun comes up, like it's always 5am. We drive through this wooded area and drive through an old summer camp. In the dream I have memories of being there the previous two summers and I think that maybe I'll apply to work there as a camp consoler this coming summer. The Van stops in front of the camp's main rec hall, some one gets out of the van and goes inside.

Inside the rec hall there's a group of kids, seemingly taken out of the fourth season of The Wire, faxing black and white photos of themselves to casting agents.

Then the van drives on and exits the camp.

We drive into Manhattan and it's still about 5am. The Van stops in the back of an old theatre and I get out because I'm not sure if this is my stop. In fact I'm no longer sure where I'm going at all. I look at the theatre girl where there's a drawing of a sexy cartoon girl. I realize it's an onstage production of Debbie Does Dallas. Two women, one dolled up in with make-up in a sparkling dress and one dressed in plain clothes, get out of the van and slip through the backstage door, smiling at me. I realize this is not my stop and I get back in the van.

Finally, I get out at my stop, a Museum, The Museum of Visual Arts, associated with the School of Visual Arts. Inside is white, pristine, and sterile, a lot like New York's Guggenhiem. I have a plastic folder full of my drawings with me, and I know I'm here to show it to someone, but I'm not sure who. Wandering around, I stop at a giant-telescope-light-pattern-thingy. Some one behind starts speaking. I turn around and realize it's my best friend, Daniel. But I'm not happy to see him. In fact, I feel pretty embarrassed. He asks what I'm doing here, and asks me what I've been doing all fall, shaking his head disapprovingly. I begin to answer, then look around an see we're surrounded by folding chairs, stacked for an assembly, with several people sitting around us. A girl in one of the chairs behind us starts reciting a short story, and I realize the assembly is starting, so I leave and head down a big white spiral staircase.

As I walk I think about Daniel's question, 'what have I been doing all fall?'... Well, I think, I've been doing a bunch of small art projects and drawings which are not necessarily for other people to see, but more to help me figure out what I'm doing.

The downstairs of the museum is white and empty except for a small kiosk booth, selling expensive art books. There's a guy behind the booth who looks like a college student and I realize he probably goes to school here. So, I take out the drawings from my folder and show them to him. It's mostly drawings of the yoga bunnies with a few torn notebook pages and random other drawings mixed in. I ask if there's anywhere in the museum where "small" art like this can be projected. He looks at me strangely, then starts going through all my drawings.

Then I'm sitting at a large table with him, just outside the kiosk. We're looking through my drawings and there's another college student there with us, a hipster asian guy. This guy asks me what the Yoga Bunnies are. Where did they come from? I tell him that I'd created them as flash cards when I was taking a yoga teacher certification course. "Oh," hey says, examining one of the cards, "So, it's about mapping out your own cognitive learning process?".... "Sure," I say. Then he picks up a picture of a bunny in an upper-push-up position, and points to the bunny's hand which, I now notice, is making the Vulcan Hand Salute from Star Trek. "This must have some kind of meaning only you understand," he says. And then he points out a bunch other cryptic little symbols in the Yoga Bunny drawings that I never noticed before: small tents, fires burning.

Then there's a girl at the table with us, also a college student. "So," she asks me, "you mentioned you were interested in doing Yoga Bunny as a pop-up book; but why a pop-up book?"... "I don't know," I say, looking through the drawings. "I must have been interested in it at some some point, but not that interested, because it looks like I started doing it and then stopped." I pick up a picture of a bunny doing a Warrior 1 pose. His head, arms, legs have been cut out and elevated to create a pop-up, 3D effect. "See," I say, "I started doing this to a couple of them but then lost interest".... "Why do you think that is?" the girl asks.... "Because there's really no point in it being a pop-up book unless it's moving in some way... Unless I can figure out a way for the bunnies to move when you open the page."

(at this point I woke up, wrote everything down, then went back to sleep and the dream continued)

I'm back upstairs in the auditorium, but the museum is now a Jewish Synagogue, and the walls have turned from white to beige. I'm giving a speech, an all encompassing this-is-what-I-think-about-life sort of speech, and within this speech I tell the story of the Yoga Bunnies and their magical origin.

When I leave the synagogue, I'm in Israel. And now I'm now a famous artist, as a result of the speech I just gave. I'm touring the country, promoting myself. We're in the city of Jerusalem, and a boy (in his early twenties, but still a boy) runs up and shows me his drawings, on large newsprint, stapled together like a book. He's illustrated the Yoga Bunnies' origins, exactly as I stated in my speech. He's done a thorough job, but since I only told this story and never put it down into pictures, it's strange to see someone else's visualization. And I don't like the way he's drawn the Yoga Bunnies at all. His drawings feel like a crude bastardization of my own work. But it's hard for me to be mad at him because he seems to admire me so much. I'm with a large group of people, so I tell him I have to go, and I'll see the rest of his work later.

My entourage and I get onto a huge roller coaster that runs through the whole city of Jerusalem. There's a pretty girl sitting next to me, and even though I just met her she's acting as though she's my girlfriend or manager or both. The roller coaster takes us so high, higher than all the buildings in the city. I look down at one of the roof of one building and see a tiny little village, a series of castles enclosed by a wall, all made out of blue construction paper. It looks like a origami nest. I can feel right away that it has a magical power, and the girl tells me that this is the original Smurf Village. I know I have to see it up close, but I can't get to it since I'm on the roller coaster, so I make a note of the building: grey bricks with bright purple trimmings around the windows.

Then the roller coaster does a bunch of crazy flips and twirls, and I can see up ahead that the flips and twirls are about to get even crazier. This makes me really nervous, and then I realize that I'm not even strapped in. I don't know how I managed to not fall out before when the roller coaster had gone upside down before, but I immediate reach up, grab the harness and strap myself down just before the ride gets really wild.

After the roller coaster, we all go to a small book fair, where a bunch of booths are set up, selling or giving away cheaply made books and political pamphlets.

The boy who had redrawn the Yoga Bunnies is there. He's selling a series of magazines that feature his own drawings, telling the story of the Yoga Bunnies in three chapters; one for each magazine. I pick up the first issue and flip through it. His illustrations have gotten much better. They look as through they were printed off wood carvings. Every picture has a rustic, ancient feel.

The first chapters tells of how the bunnies had been living in excess, eating anything they wanted, fearing no natural predators. Because of this, they kept taking from the land, without ever giving back, and eventually this behavior took a toll on their bodies. They began to change from fluffy, natural organisms into something synthetic and dead. The final illustration of the first chapter depicts the bunnies changing into a synthetic substance, while all around them, smaller black versions of themselves (maybe their souls) cry their little eyes out... I'm not sure what happens in the next two issues but I recall imagines of the bunnies, drawn in stick figure form, first farming, and then playing on the beach.

Since this is all published in magazine format, the illustrations are printed amongst numerous advertisements for Judaism and Zionism, with pictures of wise old Rabbis and texts about God.

On the front cover of all the issues, the boy is credited as the sole illustrator of the Yoga Bunnies. In the back of the magazine, I am credited as the writer, with an illustration/wood print of me, happily watering a plant. It definitely seems that my credit is an afterthought to the boy's, but his illustration of me is so endearing that it's hard to be upset. Also, I'm more concerned by the religious advertisements than I am about ownership issues. And then I remember the Smurf Village from earlier. I go off to find the grey brick building with purple window trimmings.

Jerusalem is difficult to navigate through. It feels extremely busy and compact and yet empty at the same time; like if Manhattan were smooshed together even tighter than it is now, and all the people were still there but turned invisible.

Eventually I find the building. I know I have to climb to the top but I don't know how. There is no visible way to get inside, and looking for an entrance doesn't even occur to me. I'm thinking up, not in. Then I conjure, with my mind, a small, mud-filled pig-pen; but inside there are no pigs, only Yoga Bunnies. Their color switches back and forth from white to black as they jump in and out of the mud. And then they jump into and out of one another; two bunnies melding into one and then separating again. I telepathically command the bunnies to climb the building, which they do effortlessly. I know that the bunnies will soon be able to reach the construction paper Smurf Village, even if i am stuck on the ground.

And then I wake up.

I Wrote A Children's Book and I'm Done With it and I Have to Start Shopping it Around to Publishers and Agents

2011-12-20T12:54:00.000-08:00

Here is my favorite page from the book....

It's my favorite because there are a lot of sea creatures here that I don't what their names are. If you know every creature in this drawing and tell me their scientific names I'll buy you a coffee or something. Although I'm probably lying about buying you a coffee.

So, last week I invited some friends over to show them the completed book. One of my friends asked why I didn't invite anyone with kids. I said that I had invited several people with kids, but they didn't come because they had kids to watch.

Then I few days later I visited my mom's kindergarden class and showed them the book. The kids seemed more interested in the way I had hand drawn all the words than in the actual story.

When they saw this page, they refused to let me go on with the story until I showed them how to draw "3-D" letters. Then when I showed them (I drew one of their names on the dry-erase board in the "3D" style above) they all said, "oh, that's really easy," and seemed less impressed with me as a person.

After the story was done, my mom asked the kids some questions to see if they understood it on an "emotional" level....

My Mom: so why do you think the cat was crying?

One kid: because cats don't like cheese (wrong answer)

Another kid: because the mouse was his friend and I would be sad if I had to eat my friend (right answer)

So it seems that on an aesthetic level, all kids will be really impressed by my book, at first, but then not so impressed later on.... On an emotional level, some kids will be really enthralled, and some kids will be really bored because they have no concept of friendship.

One aspect of the book that really seemed to confuse the kids was when the mouse goes to a hypnotist...

Apparently kids don't know what hypnotist are anymore. And when I tried to explain it to them they got really confused/creeped out.

When I was a kid, cartoon characters where always getting hypnotized. The first time I saw a hypnotist was in an Asterix cartoon, and I remembered also being really creeped out by the idea of being put into a trance. But after seeing it in again in the Jungle Book, and a Speedy Gonzales cartoon, I pretty much accepted that hypnotists were a normal part of the world. But kids today have never even seen a pervert in a top hat taking over their minds with a spiraling shape and silky smooth voice. How is this so? Maybe this is because they are already hypnotized by tweetering and pokemonsters. Or maybe its because the people who were making cartoons got together and looked at the hypnotist and said, "You know what... this never actually happens, so let's stop telling kids that it does."

On one hand it's good that kids don't know about hypnotist anymore because the concept is inaccurate and scary. But on the other hand, I may have to go back and redo some of the book, which I really don't feel like doing. With that in mind, if you see any kids, stop and try to explain to them what a hypnotist is. But don't actually try to hypnotize them, because that's creepy, and you'll go to jail. Rightly so.

New Stuff!

2011-11-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

So, here's some new stuff I'm pretty excited about :)

Above is a scan of a larger color pencil drawing, done on newsprint... which is a trace of of this pen drawing, below.

And below here's a scan from another color pencil tracing....

And below is the original pen drawing from this one I did while busking on the subway platform last night...

Upon a suggestion made by my cousin, Randi, I tried drawing with my left hand instead of my right. At first I thought I would only do this for five minutes or so, just to make good on my promise to try it out. But once I started I wound up using my left as much as my right

I love drawing. I do it as much as I can. I feel like I do it all the time. It's not that I get sick of it, though it does start to get familiar. But drawing with my left hand made the process feel new.

It was more difficult. I have less control of my left since its not my dominant, obviously. Yet even though it was more difficult, I found that I was actually paying less attention to the act of drawing while using the left hand than with my right.

Often when I draw I'm having a constant internal dialogue with myself about the energy of my drawings, the accuracy, if they're good or bad, or if I should be drawing at all. Sometimes it's two sport casters talking about me as a third person, as though I were an athlete and drawing were the sport. The sport casters analyze individual lines that I draw, question how my home life is effecting my drawing, and try to put my my whole career in perspective relative to tonight's performance, ect.

But there was none of that when I was drawing with my left hand. I suppose that's because I was less confident and it was more like walking across a frozen lake than running across a field of grass. At first, my inner dialogue was geared more towards talking my self into putting one leg in front of the other, so to speak.

However, after drawing with the left for a while, I would often zone out and not think of drawing at all, during long periods of drawing. At one point a women came up to me and I recognized her from a cafe I use to work at. We started talking and catching up, then after a while she said, "oh, you're drawing me!" I knew that I was drawing her, but I wasn't paying much attention to the drawing, and when I looked down, I didn't immediately recognize it as something I had drawn. Well, obviously I knew I was the one who had drawn it. But it didn't have the same familiarity. It seemed at first that it could been someone else's drawing.

So, while drawing on the subway platform, I would fill up left side of the newsprint with drawings from my left hand, then switch to the right and fill up the other side. It also felt great when I switched back to my right after getting using to the left. It almost makes me want to walk around in concrete boots for a week so I can take them off, then run, and have the sensation that I'm flying.

I gave away most of the drawings that I did last night, but I kept one.

Tonight, when I traced over that drawing with color pencils, I traced the right side of the paper (which I drew with my right hand) over with my left and I traced the left side over using my right hand. (I know, totally meta, or something, right?)

Tracing over the right side with my left hand felt incredibly tedious. Even more so that just drawing people with left hand, because involved a lot more detail work, tracing over the non-diliberate lines of my right hand in a very deliberate way with the left. Yet, because I was thinking that it was tedious and that I was "working hard", I allowed myself to have a lot of fun with it. My roommate Chris was in the room and I started screaming "woah! hey! woah! this is crazy over here!" and then Chris and I started speaking fake German to one another.

When I started using my right hand to trace over the left it was a big relief. I felt that I was no longer wearing those stupid concrete boots, so to speak. But then when Chris started talking to me again, I started to feel annoyed, and the music he was playing started to really annoy me as well. That's because I was concentrating on what I doing in a way that I wasn't when using my left hand, even though the right was "easier."

Also, there was a difference in body position. I noticed, tonight, that after drawing with my right hand for a while, my legs were crossed and I was crouched over... almost shutting off the rest of my body to focus all movement into my right hand. But with my left, I remember that the discomfort and awkwardness of drawing with the non-dominant hand was not isolated to just the hand, but moved to the whole arm and the shoulders and into the back. It was almost through I were drawing with my whole body, very awkwardly.

And a final observation about what happened when I traced over the drawings that I originally did with my left hand, using the right: Normally when I draw people's faces, using my right or my left hand, I'm very aware that I am drawing someone's face. This is also true when tracing over my drawings, which are kind like a series of faces embedded in a jungle of lines. While tracing, I'm drawn immediately to the faces, I trace them first and then trace the extraneous lines after. This was true when tracing the right side drawings with my left hand. But when tracing the left side of the paper with my right hand, I would often trace a series of lines, then pull back and go, "oh! It's a face." This guy I didn't recognize as a person at all until I finished tracing him:

I guess this goes back to what I saying earlier about the left hand drawings sometimes seeming as though they're done done by a different person than the right hand. The right hand would immediately recognize the faces in its own drawings, but the faces expressed by the left hand were less recognizable.

Well, anyways, I'm pretty stoked about all this. It gives me something to talk about on this blog, instead of always pretending that I have something funny to say and writing something stupid that isn't really funny. Unless, of course, you thought some of the past few entries were funny... in which case, you know... I wasn't really trying to be funny.

9 drawings from the Pictoplasm conference

2011-11-29T12:39:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago Jon Burgerman got me a ticket to the pictoplasm conference, where he was speaking. Jon gave an excellent presentation, and there were a lot of other exciting speakers there. But, instead of paying attention I drew several portraits using a green paint marker into a sketch book from high school, that was already full of naked ladies and people having sex, since that's what I liked to draw in high school. It's interesting how much I've matured since then. Nobody drawn with green marker is naked or having sex.

This one is Jon. I don't know the names of anyone else I drew.

Space? Effect? Energy?

2011-11-28T20:41:00.000-08:00

I had a very strange moment when I was drawing on the subway today. I suddenly remembered something from a dream I had last night. In the dream, space was represented by a series of tiny spheres all linked together... normally these spheres absorb energy, but I had a special kind of energy that could pass through the spheres... okay, that's not it exactly, but it's but best way I can put it into words.... and it was something about zoning out and drawing that allowed me to remember this feeling from my dream, and when I remembered, it felt very strange, as though I were realizing something about the physical world that went beyond my normal intelligence... if it were a movie, my pupils would have dilated and strange alien music would have played.

Also, in my dreams, I'm often making artwork thats sort of like the stuff I'm doing right now, but its much better, more fully realized, more potent... I can usually see this artwork just before I wake up, but then when I'm fully awake, it's gone.

Also, last night in my dreams, a girl took me into a small room where a table was set for a fancy diner. She said she wanted to do "laps" with me, so we knocked the settings off and then swam, or awkwardly crawled, from one end of the table to the other, as though it were a swimming pool.

9 drawings from the subway that have words written on them

2011-11-28T12:04:00.001-08:00

Sometimes when I draw on the subway I write words down. I like this a lot more than writing in a journal. Most times when I write in journal, without drawing, I feel like I'm not being honest with myself. So, when I'm drawing on the subway, and drawing really fast, I think that if I write down my thoughts with the same speed, I can get down something that's actually true, before I have a chance to second guess it. Although maybe I'm lying to myself right now about this whole process. Who knows? Should I trust the words that I think or only the words I write down?

Trees Please!

2011-11-21T15:13:00.001-08:00

This week I took a trip to New Paltz, NY! It was nice to get out of the city. Although, I have no recollection of what I did on this trip. Luckily I brought along a sketch book. Let's see if these pictures can help me remember....

Oh hey! It's a creepy trailer with bullet holes on the side. Was I staying in this trailer? Am I cooking crystal meth? I hope not.

Oh hey, look! Some trees! I must have been out in the woods. I wonder if I saw any animals. I don't see any animals in this picture. That's pretty lame.

Oh... more trees.... Now they're pink....

Really? More trees? You don't say.

Oh! Now a cute girl is talking to one of the trees. I wonder if I'm that tree. Or maybe I was the girl. Was I dressing up like a girl and hitting on trees? What do you think?

Welp. It seems like my trip to New Paltz was pretty much spent looking at trees then then maybe cooking meth and cross dressing. What are some of your favorite places to go when you want to get out of the city?

A Tale of Romance with a Twist Surprise!

2011-11-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

This is a self pity comic strip I did a few months back when I hooked up with a girl and then maybe messed it up by texting too soon or maybe didn't mess it up because she never really liked me at all; she might have been completely drunk and I didn't even notice.

If you like someone, you shouldn't text them, or if you do, you should send a very cavalier text like, "oh, I'm texting you by accident, whoops!" I have know idea how texting works. Not on a technical level of words sent by a space signal appearing on an adorable but mysterious little screen. Not on the level of tricking a girl into thinking I'm neither boring nor psychotic. Does that mean I shouldn't do it? Should we not bother with the things that we'll never understand? I'm typing on a computer right now and I have no idea what's making these words appear on the screen. There are probably electrons and magnets involved, in which case I'm totally lost. Anyways, what was the name of the first person you kissed?

ps. I'm sorry if the text is too small too read. Rest assured that everything the characters are saying is very important and if you could read it would change your life forever.

I HATE BLOGGING

2011-11-12T13:33:00.001-08:00

Sorry, don't want to be a hater. But I've been drawing too much and not all of it is worth posting, some stuff definitely is but.... oh who cares.... meow meow meow..... oh, you care, Mr. Pringles? Cats are great, even though I'm glad I don't a cat. What do you think?? Are cats doing funny things on the internet funnier if you don't have a cat?? If you like this picture, please post a funny cat link to show your appreciation.

Busking

2011-05-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

Last week I started "busking" in the subway platform. I made a sign and decorated a can and sat down by a wall in the Union Square subway. The first sign I made read "Fairly Hungry Artist Will Draw You." I used this sign for about three days.

But people, I think, ignored the first word, 'Fairly', and would often come up and give me food and also ask if I had a place to sleep for the night. I felt weird giving the impression I was homeless, so I made a new sign off of a suggestion from my friend Daniel reading "Non-Stop Artist Won't Stop Drawing You!"

I also switched from a 8.5x11 pad to a huge pad of newsprint, as big as the signs I'd made. This way I could just sit and draw for long periods of time without pages and be, if not "non-stop" then at least more "non-stop" than I would be with a smaller pad. I also tried as much as I could to not lift my pen and also to look more at people's faces than at the paper while drawing.

A lot of time if I was drawing somebody and they came up to see I'd rip it out and give it to them. So, at the end of the day, I'd wing up with a lot of drawings on ripped of pieces of newsprint.

I didn't charge a specific amount for the drawings, I just asked people to pay what they wanted, and most people who I gave something to would give at least a dollar. And a lot of people just passing by who liked my drawings would donate money as well.

Most days, I would do this a couple of hours in the afternoon, right when kids were getting out of school. So a couple of times, large groups of high school students would excitedly demand that I draw them. They were always loud, obnoxious, and all round just more fun than most people on the subway platform. One group of Hispanic girls tried to pose all sexy as I was drawing them and would say things like, "yo, make my booty look really big."

Then there was this little kid, about 9, who I saw on three separate occasions. The first time he asked me to draw a car for him. When I asked him what time he didn't say anything, so I drew a mini-van, then realized that was too boring for a 9 year old, so I put some big fins on the back. The second time he asked me to draw the guy from Dragon Ball-Z. I had a vague idea of what the guy looked like; basically a big dude with muscles and a Bart Simpson haircut. The third time I saw the kid he didn't say anything. He just stopped and looked at me and I did a quick drawing of him, then gave him the sketch. Then he went to his mom, got a dollar, and gave it to me. This kid never smiled. Both times when he asked for the car and the Dragon Ball-Z guy he was so straight forward and all business.

Then there was this guy, Danny. He came up and just started telling me how he'd gotten out of jail and was now working towards being a drug counselor for drug addicts who were going to rehab instead of prison. He was really excited to have a job where he would basically get paid to talk. He told me that, instead of drawing in the subway, I should go to an upscale gay club called the 'Brownstone', although he made sure to tell me that he wasn't gay himself. He said I looked really nice and clean-cut and should find a old gay man to take care of me. He said it would be a perfect deal because they wouldn't even want sex from me, they'd just want to be around me. "That's a great idea!" I said, busy drawing him. I offered Danny the drawing of himself when I was done, but he refused, gave me a few bucks, then got on the subway.

Shiva Gets Naked and Prepares to Watch a Movie

2010-06-25T21:14:00.001-07:00

The Moons, The Stars, Oh Yeah

2009-12-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

Too Much Fucking Coffee

2009-11-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

People Who Came into Pheobe's Yesterday

2009-11-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

I Just Got Your Letter And Wanted To Write You Back Immediately

2009-11-07T16:52:00.000-08:00

We Are Cockroaches

2009-11-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Pheobe's

2009-11-06T10:50:00.002-08:00

Smoke

2009-11-06T10:50:00.001-08:00

Pizza

2009-11-06T10:49:00.001-08:00

Take Me.

2009-10-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

How I Feel With You

2009-10-25T13:40:00.001-07:00

Driven by Devils

2009-10-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

welcome home!

2009-10-18T09:19:00.001-07:00

Four Girls

2009-10-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

father?

2009-10-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

How Did I Get Here?

2009-10-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

God vs Dinosaurs

2009-07-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

Did a little more work on this yesterday/ Put a gradient over the heart and guy the one guy and eye......

Child-like Empress Desktop

2009-07-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

this is another desktop I made for myself with a photo from Yimmys Yayo

And here is the original pic...

God vs Dinosaurs

2009-07-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

This is a t-shirt design I'm working on.
Not quite done yet but I want to post something so I feel like I'm making some progress.

Arnold desktop

2009-07-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

I've been doing more stuff in photoshop than in my sketch book lately, so I figured I'd start to post sum of that work here.

This a desktop i made for myself yesterday. I posted the full sized image so feel free to download and use it if u want.

I got the photo of arnold from this blog which has a lot of awesome photos....
http://yimmyayo.tumblr.com

Kenny's #4

2009-06-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

Kenny's #3

2009-06-16T00:52:00.001-07:00

Kenny's #2

2009-06-15T11:42:00.001-07:00

Kenny's #1

2009-06-15T11:26:00.001-07:00

Sleepy Time Gerbil-Caterpillar

2009-06-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Card for Molly

2009-04-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Molly!

2009-03-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

Zombie Antelope

2009-03-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

Card for Launa

2009-02-17T15:38:00.001-08:00

From a Photograph of Daniel's Parents

2009-02-14T07:15:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait

2009-02-12T08:32:00.001-08:00

Woodland Creature Statues

2009-01-06T19:57:00.001-08:00

Dinner at Kenny's #1

2008-12-31T09:03:00.001-08:00

From A Dream I Had While Very Drunk

2008-12-28T15:11:00.001-08:00

2 Drawings of my Youngest Sister

2008-12-28T15:02:00.001-08:00

Saxophone

2008-12-13T14:58:00.001-08:00

A Witch, Texting in the Moonlight

2008-12-13T14:56:00.001-08:00

New Hover Board Redux

2008-12-11T11:01:00.001-08:00

for upcoming 'zine put out by Sarah Perry-Stout

It's New Day!

2008-12-10T07:07:00.001-08:00

rough sketch:

Comic Book page 1

2008-12-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

photo reference

Film Splicer

2008-12-03T22:19:00.001-08:00

Girl writing in her journal

2008-11-28T18:44:00.001-08:00

Charcoal on cardboard

Launa

2008-11-28T18:42:00.000-08:00

Acrylic paints and charcoal on wood

Michael and Sean trade music with a plant in front of them

2008-11-08T19:57:00.001-08:00

Coffee and Ink

2008-11-08T19:48:00.001-08:00

Smile

2008-11-08T19:37:00.000-08:00

Printing Press

2008-11-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

sumari ink on bristol paper 9"x12"

Air Duct

2008-11-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

sumari ink and colored pencil on bristol paper 9"x12"

Inside the the classrooms at SVA/Parsons

2008-10-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

We are the only two people in the park today

2008-10-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

Daniel Wants a Car

2008-10-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

Guitar on the Couch

2008-10-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

our table after breakfast

2008-10-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

The lights at the soccer field in McCarren Park

2008-09-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Launa designs her website in Illustrator

2008-09-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Rainy Day at Variety Coffee Shop

2008-09-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Another Mermaid

2008-09-15T19:17:00.001-07:00

Couples at the Shake Shack

2008-09-10T16:25:00.000-07:00

How is Mexico?

2008-09-07T17:53:00.001-07:00

new hover board

2008-09-04T23:12:00.001-07:00

very deep

2008-09-04T22:42:00.000-07:00

science

2008-09-04T22:34:00.000-07:00